1. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.

2. He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.

3. He had 12 companions or disciples.

4. Mithra's followers were promised immortality.

5. He performed miracles.

6. As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.

7. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again.

8. His resurrection was celebrated every year.

9. He was called "the Good Shepherd" and identified with both the Lamb and the Lion.

10. He was considered the "Way, the Truth and the Light," and the "Logos," "Redeemer," "Savior" and "Messiah."

11. His sacred day was Sunday, the "Lord's Day," hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.

12. Mithra had his principal festival of what was later to become Easter.

13. His religion had a eucharist or "Lord's Supper," at which Mithra said, "He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved."

14. "His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi, a symbolical atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration."

15. Shmuel Golding is quoted as saying that 1 Cor. 10:4 is "identical words to those found in the Mithraic scriptures, except that the name Mithra is used instead of Christ."

16. The Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted as saying that Mithraic services were conduced by "fathers" and that the "chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome, was called 'Pater Patratus.'"

For example 3,000 years before Jesus was born the Egyptians worshiped the god of the Sky and Sun. He was a symbol of light and was called Horus. The Sun itself was called Horus and was also called "God's Sun" or "The Sun of God". We get the word Horizon from "Horus is risen" as the Sun rises in the morning. Horus was born to a virgin mother on December 25 and was adorned by three kings who followed a star to the East. He was baptized at the same age as Jesus and became a profound religious teacher. He had 12 disciples , one of whom betrayed him which ultimately led to his crucifixion. Horus died and rose from the grave three days later. Horus is only one of a dozen Pagan gods who have this same story and the reason is based in astrology. On the night of December 24th the tree stars of Orion's belt, which have been called "the Three Kings" since ancient times point toward the brightest star in the East which we call "Sirius". If you were to draw a line through those four stars and continue to the horizon you would find that you have marked the exact location of the sun rise on December 25th. So the three kings follow the brightest star to the east where the Sun of God is born. There's much more than this but I have gone on long enough.

"Mithra" who was an ancient savior god of the Persians who has striking similarities to Jesus before Jesus was supposed to have been born.

Many early Christians celebrated Jesus' birthday on JAN-6. Armenian Christians still do. In Alexandria, in what is now Egypt, the birthday of their god-man, Aion, was also celebrated on JAN-6.
Christians and most Pagans eventually celebrated the birthday of their god-man on DEC-25.
According to an ancient Christian tradition, Christ died on MAR-23 and resurrected on MAR-25. These dates agree precisely with the death and resurrection of Attis.
Baptism was a principal ritual; it washed away a person's sins. In some rituals, Baptism was performed by sprinkling holy water on the believer; in others, the person was totally immersed.
The most important sacrament was a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize the god-man's body and blood. His followers were accused of engaging in cannibalism.
Early Christians initiated converts in March and April by baptism. Mithraism initiated their new members at this time as well.
Early Christians were naked when they were baptized. After immersion, they then put on white clothing and a crown. They carried a candle and walked in a procession to a basilica. Followers of Mithra were also baptized naked, put on white clothing and a crown, and walked in a procession to the temple. However, they carried torches.
At Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were recorded as speaking in tongues. At Trophonius and Delos, the Pagan priestesses also spoke in tongues: They appeared to speak in such a way that each person present heard her words in the observer's own language.
An inscription to Mithras reads: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made on with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." 1 In John 6:53-54, Jesus is said to have repeated this theme: "...Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (KJV)
The Bible records that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One went to heaven and the other to hell. In the Mithras mysteries, a common image showed Mithras flanked by two torchbearers, one on either side. One held a torch pointed upwards, the other downwards. This symbolized ascent to heaven or descent to hell.
In Attis, a bull was slaughtered while on a perforated platform. The animal's blood flowed down over an initiate who stood in a pit under the platform. The believer was then considered to have been "born again." Poor people could only afford a sheep, and so were literally washed in the blood of the lamb. This practice was interpreted symbolically by Christians.
There were many additional points of similarity between Mithraism and Christianity. 2 St. Augustine even declared that the priests of Mithraism worshiped the same God as he did: Followers of both religions celebrated a ritual meal involving bread. It was called a missa in Latin or mass in English.
Both the Catholic church and Mithraism had a total of seven sacraments.
Epiphany, JAN-6, was originally the festival in which the followers of Mithra celebrated the visit of the Magi to their newborn god-man. The Christian Church took it over in the 9th century.

Update:

Jesus birth while it is impossible to nail down an exact date, Jesus was likely born in June. Why? Luke 2:8 describes Jesus's birthplace as "In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over the flock by night." That sure doesn't sound like December, does it? Gardner writes that shepherds slept with their sheep from June to November, and that June was known as the month men traditionally fed their flocks the remains of the wheat harvest.
To this day there is still no real evidence for this person that supposable did such great things. How is such a great man that can rise from the dead not ever talked about? No evidence for him has ever been found.

Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine" beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise -- of an earthly mother with a "divine" father -- was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a Paracletug, Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary. A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and the divine Fohi is born.

In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was born from her right side, to save the world." [Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I p. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. p. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young god Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the world.

In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great temple of Luxor a picture of the annunciation, conception and birth of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. "The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is," says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph."

Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following description of the, Luxor picture, quoted by G.W. Foote in his 'Bible Romances,' page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and second chapters of Luke's Gospel." Massey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the divine Wolrd or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the god Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception. ... Next the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men." [Natural Geneses. Massey, Vol. II, p. 398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own identity as well as the source from which they borrowed their material.

Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other miraculous events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the massacre of the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection and bodily ascension toward the clouds, have not only been borrowed, but are even scarcely altered in the New Testament story of Jesus.

That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from earthly sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Massey in his great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the identity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says: "The most ancient, goldbedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures of the virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and not as a human mother of Nazareth. [Vol. II, p. 487.] Science and research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand ignorance, and on the other interest only, can continue to claim inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary documents which pass for the Word of God. If, then, Jesus is stripped of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is the subject; and if we also take away from him all the teachings which collected from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed to him -- what will be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth have been culled and compiled from other sources is as demonstrable as the Pagan origin of the legends related of him.

Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection myth, the ascension, the eucharist, baptism, worship by kneeling or prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in church, the candles, "holy" water, -- even the word Mass, were all adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as 'the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at one time -- the sun in heaven.

Examples of just about word for word coping going down..:

"Mithra" who was an ancient savior god of the Persians who has striking similarities to Jesus before Jesus was supposed to have been born.

Many early Christians celebrated Jesus' birthday on JAN-6. Armenian Christians still do. In Alexandria, in what is now Egypt, the birthday of their god-man, Aion, was also celebrated on JAN-6.
Christians and most Pagans eventually celebrated the birthday of their god-man on DEC-25.
According to an ancient Christian tradition, Christ died on MAR-23 and resurrected on MAR-25. These dates agree precisely with the death and resurrection of Attis.
Baptism was a principal ritual; it washed away a person's sins. In some rituals, Baptism was performed by sprinkling holy water on the believer; in others, the person was totally immersed.
The most important sacrament was a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize the god-man's body and blood. His followers were accused of engaging in cannibalism.
Early Christians initiated converts in March and April by baptism. Mithraism initiated their new members at this time as well.
Early Christians were naked when they were baptized. After immersion, they then put on white clothing and a crown. They carried a candle and walked in a procession to a basilica. Followers of Mithra were also baptized naked, put on white clothing and a crown, and walked in a procession to the temple. However, they carried torches.
At Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were recorded as speaking in tongues. At Trophonius and Delos, the Pagan priestesses also spoke in tongues: They appeared to speak in such a way that each person present heard her words in the observer's own language.
An inscription to Mithras reads: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made on with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." 1 In John 6:53-54, Jesus is said to have repeated this theme: "...Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (KJV)
The Bible records that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One went to heaven and the other to hell. In the Mithras mysteries, a common image showed Mithras flanked by two torchbearers, one on either side. One held a torch pointed upwards, the other downwards. This symbolized ascent to heaven or descent to hell.
In Attis, a bull was slaughtered while on a perforated platform. The animal's blood flowed down over an initiate who stood in a pit under the platform. The believer was then considered to have been "born again." Poor people could only afford a sheep, and so were literally washed in the blood of the lamb. This practice was interpreted symbolically by Christians.
There were many additional points of similarity between Mithraism and Christianity. 2 St. Augustine even declared that the priests of Mithraism worshiped the same God as he did: Followers of both religions celebrated a ritual meal involving bread. It was called a missa in Latin or mass in English.
Both the Catholic church and Mithraism had a total of seven sacraments.
Epiphany, JAN-6, was originally the festival in which the followers of Mithra celebrated the visit of the Magi to their newborn god-man. The Christian Church took it over in the 9th century.

Any reputable proof of this? And did it happen before Jesus or after? All I can testify to, is that Jesus fulfilled every Old Testament prophecy that was prophesied about the Messiah.

And December 25th is not the day that Jesus was born. We celebrate Christmas on that day because Constantine took a pagan holiday (a day for the pagan sun god) and replaced it with the birth of Jesus. The pagans had their holiday, and Constantine replaced it with a Christian one.

Any reputable proof of this? And did it happen before Jesus or after? All I can testify to, is that Jesus fulfilled every Old Testament prophecy that was prophesied about the Messiah.

And December 25th is not the day that Jesus was born. We celebrate Christmas on that day because Constantine took a pagan holiday (a day for the pagan sun god) and replaced it with the birth of Jesus. The pagans had their holiday, and Constantine replaced it with a Christian one.

Mithraism originated in Asia Minor, which though once within the sphere of Zoroastrian influence, by the second century BCE were more influenced by Hellenism than by Zoroastrianism. It was there, at Pergamum on the Aegean Sea, in the second century BCE, that Greek sculptors started to produce the highly standardized bas-relief imagery of Mithra Tauroctonos "Mithra the bull-slayer."

Mithraism was a Roman mystery religion which became popular among the military in the late Roman Empire. (1st to 4th centuries CE). It is best attested in the cities of Rome and Ostia and in some of the Empire's provinces, specifically Mauretania, Britain and those along the Rhine and Danube frontier.

I never said that the Christians born from a virgin, so cold god was born on the 25th. It has been shown that they do not know wen he was born, do to the fact that there is no real evidence that this Christian character was a real person in the first place.

I have also seen that Christian made sight before, you find that a lot of what they say is very untrust <--(spelling ???) -worthy.

Later if I have time I could pick the hole site apart for you. Using real research. But for now, I have to finish up a show I am watching, get me a shower, and get ready for work in the morning.

Zoroastrianism is believed to have heavily influenced many Abrahamic religions with key concepts such as "Armageddon" ,"demonology" and so on, but the biggest influence perhaps was the concept of "free will".

The Ahura Mazda, the one Uncreated Creator to whom all worship is ultimately directed is directly opposed by Angra Mainyu: The destructive and chaotic principle of the world. It is believed that humanity can help defeat Angra Mainyu through active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay.

This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will.

1. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.

2. He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.

3. He had 12 companions or disciples.

4. Mithra's followers were promised immortality.

5. He performed miracles.

6. As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.

7. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again.

8. His resurrection was celebrated every year.

9. He was called "the Good Shepherd" and identified with both the Lamb and the Lion.

10. He was considered the "Way, the Truth and the Light," and the "Logos," "Redeemer," "Savior" and "Messiah."

11. His sacred day was Sunday, the "Lord's Day," hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.

12. Mithra had his principal festival of what was later to become Easter.

13. His religion had a eucharist or "Lord's Supper," at which Mithra said, "He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved."

14. "His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi, a symbolical atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration."

15. Shmuel Golding is quoted as saying that 1 Cor. 10:4 is "identical words to those found in the Mithraic scriptures, except that the name Mithra is used instead of Christ."

16. The Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted as saying that Mithraic services were conduced by "fathers" and that the "chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome, was called 'Pater Patratus.'"

All this is mostly true, but you forgot these details.

Jesus was actually born on the 23rd, not the 25th.

The 25th was established by the early christian church (before it became known as "catholic") as a way to not celebrate his birthday as the same day as the winter solstice.

Everythinig else is totally true, however, christianity is not 100% copycat, since it was also heavily influenced by Judaism as well, not only Zoroastrianism, like you say above. Plus, those beliefs above are from those neo religions of the Persians in the early years of the first millennium. So, rather than a copycat religion, is more of a "little bit of.." religion from the mid east rather than just copycat.

It's true christianity took a lot of stuff from other religions, mythology, etc but I wouldn't say it's copycat because everything we have now came from something else (sorry no examples now), things change as the time passes, but carrying something from the past. If christianity turned out to be a nice religion, there's nothing to bother about, however i won't discuss if it's nice or not.....

Really so this silly tale is supposed to be a copycat of Christianity... I really don't think so. :D

Its the other way around its been around longer than Christianity, but if you look at it you see Christianity takes parts of a few religions and mix them together to make the newest fad/religion out today. (Yeah I think of Christianity as a fad!)